


Intermission: Sweeps, of Increasing Irreconcilability

by Sudrien (a_b_b_e)



Series: The timeline in which Roxy Bends [16]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26703631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_b_b_e/pseuds/Sudrien
Summary: Which Condesce is this being on Earth for a good while?One of them.If none of these exactly feel finished - well, I might get to finishing them if I have ideas. But it felt better not to hold onto them forever while waiting for those ideas.
Series: The timeline in which Roxy Bends [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/254185
Kudos: 4





	1. What, Praytell, is a Texus

The peasants were revolting. Not only figuratively, though _Gertsoginya Sniskhoditel'nosti_ had put more effort into getting used to the species since fleeing Wales.

This human title was ... bought. Though at the time of purchase, there really had been no better investment to be had. Humans were so undeveloped as a species, a huge majority were preoccupied with digging in the dirt for food. And the best rates of return were from charging them for the privilege of digging in your dirt. Which completely lined up with having no actual language to speak to each other with, just these local mutual murmurings.

The peasants, the dirt diggers, were now wandering the edge of her purchased estate . Legally, they weren't "hers", like the hereditary nobles. But the gold it'd take to force them to go back home and stay there... soldiers were more expensive than dirt farmers. And Favors were more expensive still, when the proper nobility could use her as an easy way to funnel anger.

She had three defenses; the guards she had on hire, which weren't many. The walls, slightly refurbished, built around a more proper fortress - oh, the outside walls would burn easily enough, if given any motivation. And her own psionics, which kept anybody that wandered too close to her doors in a mental morass so deep they wouldn't realize if they had ever found them.

The last point made the guards even more useless than they would normally have been.

It wasn't even a question if she'd been "careful". If she hadn't been careful, they'd be shouting ... _Chudovishche_? Something like that. She had learned enough of this "language" to manage the dirt digging business. If her knowledge of events in other countries was worth anything , there were probably searching for old debt records to burn... and that would eat away what profits she had managed with the estate.

She could massacre the lot of them. Physically easy, although she risked burns - but that would be neither careful nor profitable; new peasants would be slow to find their way to her farms. And fabrications of a plague would not help.

Honestly, was it time for another long trip? She'd admired the furs coming in from the colonies in Alyaska for a few years, and she'd considered getting in on that racket before. E ven if she'd have to refurbish the place when she got back, again, diversifying from farming felt like a good idea at the moment. Any corrupt stooge could be appointed to watch the land while she was gone.

She looked out at the crowd , heavy drapes keeping the flickering fireplace light from notifying any who might notice her form in the window's frame . Unfortunately, "go home" wasn't part of her psychic vocabulary. She at least needed to get her person and her bullion out of out of here .

The night was warm enough. She could travel light. All the better to manage the weight of gold bars.

She had no treasure house, no large safe. Just small holes around the house and chambers, stashes. She unbuttoned her blouse, loosened her corset, and surveyed first her chambers, then the rest of the house. Checking know nooks and crannies, stuffing in the small rounded bars down her busk. At least it would serving some purpose, other than drawing the fascination of certain humans towards a small waist. Ok, the small waist, tightened to frightening proportions but human standards, did at least make public appearances easier to manage. It was so much easier to make nobody care about your horns if they had somthing else to focus on. Which was as good as any tradeoff for not being able to move as she wished in an over-supportive garment. Now, it was the gold bars alowly pressing her innards further and further up into her thorax. A cheap bath in gold, compared to the old days, but still one worth taking.

Just as long as she did not have to balance it all on those stupid European high-heeled shoes. No. Riding boots , obviously.

Back doors and hidden passages. The last few bars. One or two bars missing, probably taken by the staff, already fled. 

  
~

The main hall. Where supposedly she should be dazzling visitors with riches. Hah. No. She was too practical for that. Not nearly enough riches to show a proper dazzle, yet.

But then came the realization she had made one splurge. Because there was the last - theoretically faithful, possibly just slow to flee - servant directing her guards in a muddled manner befitting their current psionic impediments, to open a crate that had arrived at possibly the worst time.

Oh Pizdets . They were slowly unboxing the statue she had ordered last year. She had been informed it was coming from England weeks ago - an expensive enough proposition - and it made it today of all days.

«FOOLS. Go home. There is nothing to defend here.»

The servant and guard s looked up at her, hazily. Had the y even realize d the statue wasn't her? She pointed at the back door, «Go home, NOW.»

They shrugged at each other, and did. Peasants might have noticed the last four of the houses' staff exiting, but nobody would be of a mind to check the door until after she was gone.

Carefully, she grabbed the statue around the waist - a decent likeness, save for the lack of horns and the scale of the thing, acceptable given the drawings were sent to Coade's people - and drug it though the long passages through the kitchen and to the root cellar . She took several breaks to roughly rearrange the bullion if pressed into her gut just that much harder.

The root cellar was underneath the kitchen, a heavy trap door - for humans - separating it from the bustle that probably wouldn't return for a good number of months. She gently lowered it down under the kitchen floor, and deposited in what could barely be called a corner - eased herself back out of the dirty room. As a last precaution, she braced against the trap door and yanked the rusty rung clean out of it, before letting it slam closed. If nothing else in this house , she'd be back for that.

The stars were bright. Some of the peasants had wandered far enough away to gain a bit of their sense back, and oblivious to the time that had passed, apparently returned with more torches. She wondered if she should just sit and watch, wait and see how many eventually let the torches burn so low as to cause their skin to blister. 

It was probably not worth it. Probably. She had enough details to sort out that she could not manage here.

There were horses in the stables, but no carriage. Fine. A hay wagon would do, even id she had to lean over the normal seat more than sit in it.

Taking a final look at her estate, beyond the mulling ring of peasants, she consciously went through the process of loosening the mental knots she had set up for the place to inflict. The rabble might as well get back to their homes before morning.


	2. Later, but not later enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> <https://tumblr.altamaranempire.com/post/188567669162/a-commissioned-set-of-sketches-for-sudrien-one> has some draws "inspired" by this
> 
> Yeah it's been on the back burner a while

It was cold. The sky and the sea, indistinguishably cold. It was slower going under the waves than it had been above them.

It wasn't her fault that the ship she had chartered - though, honestly, they had probably been headed to Alyaska anyways, but whatever - had sunk beneath the waves during what must hardly count as a storm. She hadn't even woken up during it. There was no real telling just how long after she had woken up to a pitch black cabin flooded with water, upside down. There wasn't much to do at that point other than grab what gold she could and swim away. The human sailors? Obviously escaped or dead already _anyways_.

While cold, the _Béringovo_ at least had plenty of food - while she had managed a respectable layer of blubber for the season, the cold of the water invited her to add more in her meandering eastward swim.

Really, she hadn't swum this much in sweeps. It was ... invigorating at first. Days passed. Wake up, catch some food, swim east, catch come food, sleep. It was starting to bring up bad memories of other long, lonely trips though.

There were, occasionally, some larger animals with a single horn coming from their snout, roughly as long as she was tall, though with lighter complections. While they obviously weren't sentient, the occasional company was nice. A distraction from the black depths.

Then - finally - the smell of something on the wind. More birds overhead. Land, certainly?

Rowing. The sound of rowing. She peeked out above the waves. _Boats_. Tiny ones, only large enough for two or three humans dressed in white. Excitedly she swam towards them.

They were shouting something. To her? To each other? She rose to tread water long enough to listen- "Qalupalik." They sounded scar- oh _pizdets_ those were spears. She dove, and the pointed shafts plunged into the water around her.

Rude. Id she hadn't been alert, one might have even hit her. As it was, they floated back up to the surface.

Well, there was more than one way to get a human to help her.

She plunged deep, arcing towards one of the boats in the center of the group, before shooting up beside it.

It was a tiny boat on the ocean. Lightweight. The wooden frame supporting the hide outwale snapped easily in her grip. It's occupants shouted in panic - she slowly grabbed one by his ridiculously furry coat, allowing him enough time to slip out of it before she dragged it under the water.

The remaining boats scrambled to take on passengers before they too would into the icy water - and the broken boat was pulled beneath the waves after it was abandoned. It wouldn't have sunk at all, unburdened, unless it were caught on something.

Some stood ready with spears, anxiously watching the water for anything that wasn't a wave, while others quickly talked. Would heading back to the village head this thing back to their families? It was too aggressive to be a Qalupalik. No, they'd beech up the coast and walk back. The hunt was ruined anyways - they couldn't even recover the lost boat to fix it.

Of course, she had no objections to being lead to land.

~

It was a worrying week in the village. Even with the precautions, things were going missing. Tools. Clothes. Chunks of blubber ready for lamps. People suddenly realizing the sun had moved and they hadn't noticed.

It was only when one of the children found a gold bar near one of the fires that the reports of unexplained events stopped.

~

She had learned nothing about where she was. It had to be Alyaska, she was sure of it, but even if she had thought to recover the map before abandoning the shipwreck, she still had no skill as an Earthly navigator to figure out her own position. But the nights were so short - she was too far north to winter on her own, and needed to go south while the going was good. And if the coastline wasn't going south - eastwards until it did, then. South and East until she found a colony where her gold could get her the things the hadn't found in the village.

The fur of her stolen cloak had long dried, the broken boat fashioned in to a pack of the supplies she bought at what she considered an exorbitant price - warmer climes called.


	3. You Might Call it a a Backbreaking Labor of Gargantuan Proportions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was many years of travel, and many years of performance more 'til she properly bought out the circus.
> 
> There were some profits. But the freedom to move on suited her.

There was a rattling knock on the door.

Betty sighed, shifting her seating position on the floor, and reached over to the back of the wagon and flipping the doorstop out of the way, and letting the dim light filter out on to whatever was out there.

She sighed again, this time in relief, "Sassacre."

"Why, who were you expecting?"

"This long after a show? I usually get sent the persistently horny ones. Separate them from their greenbacks. Let me guess, though - pay or you're skipping the last night?"

"No, no - I mean, I would take the pay, but it's the state of affairs I more worried about."

"Hmm," She pulled out a ledger, paging through it, "Sassacre. I can do 28 tonight, bonus of 10 on Monday. Had a no-show, so we could use you for the weekend."

"And you know why you'd have a no-show."

"Messed up the train schedule. It happens. Probably have a telegraph about it in the morning."

"Betty, Hun, your setup isn't viable anymore."

Betty slammed the book. "I appreciate your concern, but I can make it work."

"No, I mean I've already had offers from the local music halls - I refused. I've gotten many hints others didn't."

"So they're buying my talent out from under me... Move, I'm coming out."

Sassacre backed up, allowing Betty to exit through the wagon's relatively tiny door, a little smitten as grey skin wormed though it and stood upright, towering over him.

"I'll suppose all it takes to confirm that is seeing who shows up in the evening, right? But you'll be there," She pressed the $28 in greenbacks into his chest.

Sassacre quickly confirmed this count before shoving the bills into a pocket, "I can run through multiple bits if I need to take up more time - some of them are a little rough yet."

"Last night's did seem to be less practiced. I suppose I can let loose if need be," she smiled, not towards him, "I've done a few acts over the years. If things are as bad as you say, we can alternate acts for some extra time. Buy each other a few minutes to recover."

"But you haven't heard my proposal."

"Your... proposal," She had heard that word a few times, and never in a context she'd ended up liking.

"If - IF this circus is doomed. My parents have 40 acres of stumps that they haven't cleared. There's plenty of space to park the wagons, your collection. We tour together. You and I. I mean, if we can hold up tomorrow evening, and bad as the murmurs have sounded, I suspect you aren't ready to throw in the towel yet, even if you aren't so used to the rate of travel I've been accustomed to. We just stick together, for a while. Take rails farther than the road would take us."

"You make it sound like we'll have the whole show to ourselves tomorrow night."

He already looked strained, "We might."

~

The sideshow was quiet as the sun rose. That was ok, everything was due for a polish.

The barker never showed up.

He could be sick. That was fine. It would mean nothing would wake her up accidentally. And Thursday? Not their biggest day.

At least the sideshow tent did have a "closed" sign. Even if it might cost her a few bucks, she still needed her sleep if she was going to be "pleasant" to the humans at the next show.

But she didn't sleep well. The tent over her sleeping wagon, sunward side still exposed to supposedly paying passers-by, kept most sunlight out - not that this sun's light would lead to any immediate physical harm - but dim shadows still danced on the walls.

Many times a figure - no, not Sasaccre's outline, almost made it to the tent entrance, before turning around.

Then the sun was too high, and there were no shadows. And worry alone wasn't enough to keep her awake.

~

She screaming of a small child woke her - not in her ear, somewhere outside. This was not unusual. Nobody had lit anything in the tent - well, nobody was there to do so.

She peeked through the top of a seam. People were starting to line up - and they were starting to light the main tent. Good.

The week on site had been on-site long enough that her apathy-psyonics were as well established as they could be without having people drooling - she just jumped around in the sheltered of circled circus wagons a bit to let sleep-jostled bones settle into place, and slipped into a dress more appropriate to society before heading out.

Food before a performance was meant to be more energizing than filling - her cook was still there, looking worried. The pot that was usually halfway full by the time she got to it was brimming.

"I... I don't know if I should start dinner. Is there even-"

"There's going to be be a show - count on half the usual mouths," She breathed deep, "I just hope I don't have to do it all myself."


	4. A bit of privacy

There were many advantages to having a private railcar. And Betty Sassacre could make enough of them work in her favor. The interior height was ample, there was plenty of space inside for her and her husband's beds - they'd never have to worry about a hotel room not accommodating her - he had his miniature study, she had her kitchen.

Pulman didn't just want an arm and a leg for one, though. Pullman would leave you your own head, if you were lucky.

On top of that madness, the price the railways were ready to charge just for it to sit on a side track for a few days - exorbitant.

It had been a sheer stroke of luck that Colonel Sassacre - That persona that he still preferred in public - had been anywhere near a card table with Pulman. Had the man been at good with investing money as he was at calling cards - Well, they would have been able to legitimately afford a car rather than insulting their way into owning one.

That was the sort of thing that kept the "rich" in name from actually being rich. Their honor. Betty had always been one to sacrifice honor for winning, and winning for profit.

In this case, she just reaped the benefits. Sassacre would sacrifice honor for a mere joke. And in this case, wining a card game by stirring up an opponent? The profit was good. They worked well together.

Their current train was heading eastward. Not to Hauntswitch, where they were slowly expanding his late parent's house into a proper mansion as money could be set aside, but they'd surely check on progress after their current engagement. He was at his typewriter - one of the few working models from an investment gone sour - taking turns continuing on his opus and untangling the device's locked hammers. It would be worse if he were a particularly adept typist, but she was convinced the thought the extra time to think over "manual labor" was a good thing.

She'd cook, frequently. She had before, when they'd always had some hotel to go to during the day, between music hall shows, various kitchens she probably wasn't supposed to be in in the off hours of the night. But if one expected her to survive on a paltry human diet even under normal conditions, one was bound to receive numerous unpleasant surprises. And if one expected her to preform a show or two a day, lending her the kitchen key was the cheaper option.

She was very much a person who would bake a cake, cut her husband a sizable slice, than eat the rest of it. 

And if it were a small kitchen - well, even if it weren't - she had become extremely proficient in preforming her warm-up routine in front of an oven, to come back to a warm cake after the show.

On the tracks, though, she had her little coal stove and some space to relax. She'd try not to stretch - really - but she'd wake up to find her bones has "settled wrong" as she slept. This meant that Sassacre never knew what condition he'd find his wife in when he looked up from his typewriter. Merely that, if he wanted a peck at her cheek during his breaks, anything he could do to throw his weight into whatever she was doing would get a better response - the moment he treated her like something dainty was the moment he knew he was not welcome in bed that night.


	5. They Shall Know Me by My Voice

It was pointless. It was all pointless, and every action they did made it even more so. 

Betty tried not to fume over yet another script, as she had tried not to fume for months. It would just make her own eventual planetary takeover that much easier... or harder. These humans go through all the trouble of having not just one, but two world wars. The latter was anti-uinification, which of course that would be opposed... of course the would-be unifiers were genocidal to their own people. Madness.

And planet wouldn't know the qualities of a good emperor if it stared them in the face. Hell, the second war ended with losing one of them in all but name.

The only good thing that seemed to be coming of it was the new science wasn't being hidden away. They loved these bombs they had developed, to a frightening extent.

Too many killed? No, not enough, apparently, or at least mostly the wrong people for moving human society forward.

  
It was the sort of thing that made her want to get into human politics. For brief moments. Brief, passing moments.  
  
~

A Baker was unlikely to get too involved in these current communist scares that were starting to pop up. Much less a domestic food titan. 

She forced her eyes back down to the desk, to the scripts. Fortunately, she had writers that could be blissfully ignorant of the depth of her frustrations. Unfortunately, they would wax a little too patriotic at times. No. She struck out an entire paragraph. Geographic location was not a reason to trust "fellow" humans over others. "Shared ideals" were stated to be betrayed. Assertion of a domain outside the home... to not be under the thumb of a returning husband...

She scratched out a paragraph. This one would have to go back - bad, but salvageable. The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air was no place to perpetuate that sort of fear. It was a place to discretely sow the seeds of discord to unseat the ruling group - yes - even if that had to be a very slow process, as to not alarm the ruling group.

She should record something. It would be a week or two until the big push, with long days of oration - which could of course only be her. Any human girl hired would just be under the command of the writers, and even as it was they already twisted the occasional direct instruction Betty had given them during their revisions.

She stood up, the wooden chair revealing how few favors it was doing her back.

Wait. This might be an opportunity.

The mansion had a network of telephone receivers throughout the rooms - she cranked twice and waited for a moment for one of the staff to pick up.

"Yes?"

"Is Jade in the house?"

"I believe the children are in the middle of a tutoring session." 

"So yes. Which subject?"

"It was... Connors, madam. I believe it is Algebra."

"Fine. Let him have a little more time with John - he has the Colonel's mind for numbers - and bring Jade up to the recording room. Escort her. That will be all."

"Yes, madam."

~

The recording room was next to her study, so Betty had a few moments of waiting to properly address the state of her back. Twisting to both sides - a lot of pops of vertebrae correcting themselves, not nearly the right feel. She pushed her abdomen forward, her spine pulling into a "U" and her shoulders eventually feeling the familiar sensation of her arse pressed against them, as that "U" attempted to become an "I" - finally a satisfying clunk.

"Madam"

Ah. The maid and Jade. They'd both seen this before - she straightened out "Jade, come in. You may go."

"Are you gonna try and twist me like a pretzel again?" Jade was stand-offish.

"No, dear. You've made it very clear you don't want to exercise with your Mother, and I will respect that. I thought," She turned the operator's chair towards the girl, "You might want to help me record."

Jade seemed both excited at the prospect and more apprehensive at the same time.

"I heard your song. And it's 'Kal-a-ma-zoo', not 'Min-ne-ton-ka'."

That got a sad look.

"But I'll let you keep the recording if you help," Betty held up a reel of recording wire.

"That was in my room!" Jade shouted.

"And it's wire I paid for. But. I'll get you a little recorder to play around with. If."

"If?"

"If you learn how to operate the sound board."

Jade thought about this for a minute. She had wanted to get a camera, and film, but her mother had refused this request time and time again.

"Ok."

Between her and John, Jade had always been the one to push back against Betty. While Sassacre was alive - John was her boy, and Jade was his girl. Given the chance to play radio station, though, Jade's demeanor softened - the sound level bulbs held her gaze, she listened intently to her mother though he headset... the girl's only point of complaint was that there were only two copies of the recording being made from the console-sized wire recorder the audio equipment was hooked up to. There should be more copies, if somthing went wrong. At least five.

Given the primitive state of the technology, Betty could see her point.


	6. The Long-Abandoned Gold Standard

The Bakelite phone's handset smashed down, not quite satisfyingly, on it's base.

There were reasons to whip yourself up into an actual rage, and this wasn't one of them. Coade statues weren't supposed to last forever, at least on the time scales Betty was used to working in. But Cod. Damn. It. Who had decided to send a full size trailer truck to her estate? One look at the drive and you could tell it wasn't built for that.

Walk.

Think.

It wasn't often that Betty came in to the Crocker Corp. offices - as such, there was a temporary heavy malaise of psychic don't-give-a-shit energy hanging over the halls. The sort of energy that might have a person notice she wasn't wearing makeup, but not that her skin was grey as a result. While freeing in that one aspect, being able to convince somebody they had lost in rock-paper-scissors didn't make for a productive day in the office.

It was bad enough that, if she were to, say, wander down to the factory floor, they would actually have to stop the production line, or everything partway complete would be trash.

"Jim - Jim." She read the name posted on the office door. She could probably remember it if she tried, but why bother? He had the nicest art posted in his office. "You know anything about statues?"

"Why, you got new war-dead?"

"This is nothing to do with the Rainbow acquisition. I'm down a me. Truck took me on my own driveway this morning."

"Ouch. My condolences. That was a granite one, wasn't it?"

"Coade- a clay," she paused trying, to read just how aware he was by his talking, but decided it was the usual sales make-something-up-when-you-know-nothing going on all cylinders, "as I understand it."

"It sounds.... that one's been out of style for a century, hasn't it? Coade?"

"Something like that. I was lucky to commission it when I did."

"Well, I'm sure you could find someone to do something in Brass - though it probably would have been easier before the war. Back when they were un-forgetting all those Grey Backs."

"Brass? Why would I stoop to brass? I want gold."

"Like... life size? Or doll size? A tall drink like you would need literal tons of gold. That's a million dollar statue, not mentioning paying your guy enough not to walk off with any."

"A million? I got a million."

"You can put gold on top of the brass and save - I mean yes, but that's... the premiums are going to shoot up if you buy that much. You'd have to deal with the federal government to get that much gold. And good luck making them think you have a good enough reason."

"Doll size. What do you mean by doll-size? Is there an official one of those now?"

"Oh. Um. Well, I'm not talking the stuffed ones, the Raggedy Andies and all, but I do have a granddaughter that's started collecting Lilli dolls. More so the clothes for them. Most of them are foot-tall or so. All imported. Plastics, Vinyl. Hah." 

"Hah?"

"I wonder if they could groove a doll like a record? Play music off of it? Probably make it look ugly as sin." 

"Trophy size..."

"I suppose, a little big for a trophy."

"Nothing stateside?"

"I've seen a few copies on shelves. I think there was some lawsuit over them a few years ago," He paused, "Why?" 

"I'm feeling a cross-promotional coming on."


End file.
